My unit fails to complete the Loading Information step during net connect and displays a S03 message suggestive of a drive problem. With other Tivo models I've been able to take corrective action with the Kickstart/57 procedure. However, the HDD/DVD buttons light up simultaneously when the RS-TX20 is plugged in, and I don't know when to press the Pause and 5 and 7 buttons in order to get to the green diagnostic message screen.

Any advice on using Kickstart with this model will be greatly appreciated.

I had this S03 message when a week after I did my hard drive upgrade. I tried one of these codes and sure enough one the third or fourth try I got the green screen. It repaired itself in about half an hour and has been good for the last 6 weeks. I'm not sure if it was 56 or 57, and yes it's really vague how ith works with these units......

Thanks, Chester. I just started pressing Pause and 57 as soon as the lights came on and sort of stumbled into the green screen when I accidentally pressed 58! I'm glad to report that the repair succeeded after 30 minutes.

I have tried at least 30 times to force a kickstart on my RS-TX60, and it ignores me. Toshiba tech support claims that there is no kickstart on their unit. TiVo "support" just shrugs their shoulders (I can hear it over the phone), and says to call Toshiba. That's it. Nobody loves me. My S03 error started after they pushed down a service update (new software) on 12/5. No successful loads since then.

My RsTX20 doesn't give me an S03 error. It's just stuck in a perpetual reboot cycle. I've tried Pause 58 when both LEDS light up. I've also kept trying it as the boot up sequence progresses to no avail. I can't seem to get to the Green Screen on this unit.

I'm thinking now I have to try to repair the disk by removing it from the unit. Can I mount this on a Linux system to try this ? Anyone know how I can reimage the
disk ?

Probably you should try the drive in your PC. If your PC supports SMART it'll tell you when it POSTs if the drive is failing. If not you may want to re-image the drive, if it is failing or it's time for an upgrade then you can use MFSTOOLS 2.0 with large drive support. It will take some time reseaching the proper techniques. If you have an extra $20 buy an instantcake from PTVUpgrade, it's much simpler.

I had the a similar issue...seems like a number of people are reporting after two years the original drive dies on the RS-TX20. After several days of trying to kickstart, I just opted for a new bigger hard drive. Its been working great -- plus I noticed my Tivo now records a TON of "suggestions" for me to watch -- where as before it was just a couple, if any.

I am having the same problem with my RS-TX20 two years old. Both led's light and I get no video at all on the tv. It was rebooting itself for months but always restarted after unplugging and replugging power. Toshiba is no help. What is the pause/58 deal to reset, is that on the remote? Also, where can I find out how to replace the hard drive? I hate to just can this $500 piece of equipment. Thanks guys!

PS: Does the replacement hard drive have to be anything special, or can you just put in any old IDE type drive?

My2 year oldtx20 has a bad drive I think. It was rebooting spontaneously for few months, but now all I get is two leds on the front lit up, no video output to tv.
Toshiba is no help, I tried to shame them into fixing it under warantee, no luck.
O would try to replc the drive if this is what needs to be done:
What kind of drive must one use? Any old IDE drive or specially prepped one?
How difficult is the repair? I am moderately handy especially with small stuff.
Any advise appreciated, thanks for an interesting discussion!

If i can't fix it it's in the garbage and over to cable's DVR. i also need dvd recorder.

Any old IDE drive larger in capacity will work. You can prep the drive yourself, best bet would be an Instantcake from DVRUpgrade for another $20. If you want someone to prep the drive so all you need is a screwdriver (included I believe) try Weakness.
See ya,
Roger

I have the InstantCake disk but the instructions highly recommend not using the existing drive. In my case, the existing drive doesn't work and I don't really want to fork over more money to buy a new one unless I absolutely have to. Does anyone have any experience simply reformatting their existing hard-drive with InstantCake ?

I have the InstantCake disk but the instructions highly recommend not using the existing drive. In my case, the existing drive doesn't work and I don't really want to fork over more money to buy a new one unless I absolutely have to. Does anyone have any experience simply reformatting their existing hard-drive with InstantCake ?

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Toshiba RS-TX20
Comcast Dig. Cable

It shouldn't be a problem. You'll want to run the software from your hard-drive's manufacturer first to see if the drive is worth re-imaging or if it's on it's way out. Keep in mind your original hard-drive has been spinning 24/7/365 for the number of years you've owned it. I'd expect to replace mine after 3 years, and would be thrilled to get 5 years.

Go ahead and use the old, remember thatyou may need to replace the drive at any time, but you can keep your money in your pocket until then.

So I finally got InstantCake and reimaged my existing 120G drive. I still see the same perpetual reboot problem. I then tried imaging a much smaller IDE drive (12G). InstantCake baked it okay and told me I had 8 hours of recording capacity, but that drive has the same issue also.

I'm not so confident that a the drive is necessarily the problem here. Anybody else think of what else it could be ? Would anyone still try the larger disk ?

My recollection is that InstantCake requires that the replacement drive be larger than the existing. That may be your problem and why they do not recommend using the existing drive.

I attempted to copy my existing drive with MFStools and was not successful. It did what you are experiencing - continued to reboot perpetually. I then used InstantCake on a new, larger drive and had no problems.

So I finally forked over some money for a larger drive than the original (250GB) and baked that using InstantCake 7.2 for this DVR and I still have the same problem. The bake process took only about 10 minutes. It essentially consited of uncompressing a 760MB file. I got the message:
Adding pair /dev/hdc12-/dev/hdc13
New estimated sie: 282 hours

Is this about the right bake time for this drive size ? Any other ideas ?

I put the new disk in the TIVO and I still have the same perpetual reboot problem. This was first disk greater than the original I had tried, but since I have tried at least three disks with the same results, this leads me to believe it isn't the disk but something else in the system.

The main question I had was if the 10 minute bake time was about the correct size for this disk (about 10 minutes).

So I finally figured this out and I wanted to share my experience for anyone else who runs into this. It turns out my system wouldn't boot because of some interim badness with the DVD drive. I first tried making the (newly baked) disk as Master and DVD as Slave and that didn't work. I then bypassed the DVD completely, and alas, my HDD booted okay.

I then removed a disk from the DVD drive, reconnected it, and rebooted with both devices connected and I am back up and running on my original disk !

I see this is over a year ago but I am having problems w/ boot loop and the green screen. My original problem was not getting any more guides from Directv. Checked phone etc and kept getting S03 error. I tried guided setup and doing setting for cable and then back to satellite as I heard this has fixed the S03 problem in some cases but it never made it through the setup for cable. When it tried to load the update, it pukes at 65% and HD makes cliking noises.. everytime. I tried the pause 57 during a reboot and got the green screen. I never had a chance to do the clear and delete everything and only moved 1/2 of my programs off.

Green screen took about the 3 hours and rebooted but it did not fix itself. Now it just reboots every 5-10 minutes or so. I get the welcome powering screen, the almost there screen, then the green screen of death then it all starts over. what prompted me to post was what Chaak20 said about DVD drive.

I have a DVD-RW in the drive...(actually it's stuck there now until I open her up) will this cause boot problems or not? I am hoping it is just the drive as I orded one yesterday fron Weaknees. My original is 2 years one month old. One month out of the 2year warranty I purchased.... typical isn't it!

Besides the manufacturer diagnostics.. what tools can I use to check/repair and or get programs off this drive? I am not sure if Instancake of MFStools do this. My guess is it's a paper weight now.

Also.. I would imagine I can buy the same size drive or bigger and copy my newly purchased drive w/ Instancake and use as a backup? If so, is it better to copy it righjt out of the box or after I have done a guided setup?